Remorseless Killer Or Latest Scapegoat?

LYNNE TUOHYCourant Staff Writer

Defense attorney Mickey Sherman in his final arguments to the jury Monday said the state has been playing "investigative musical chairs for 27 years" in its efforts to pin the murder of Martha Moxley on somebody, until it finally put Michael Skakel into the defendant's chair.

Prosecutor Jonathan Benedict used Skakel's own words in an effort to convince jurors that Skakel for years has been "spinning" alibis for his whereabouts and any possible link to the crime scene, including an elaborate tale of the night's events in a taped interview in 1997 for a book Skakel hoped to publish about his life as a Kennedy cousin.

"Spinning a tale covering all the bases, he took [ghostwriter] Richard Hoffman right to the crime scene, indeed to a point where, rather than spinning a nice tight explanation, he has spun a web in which he has ultimately entrapped himself," Benedict said.

The jurors heard both lawyers mock the credibility of the opposing witnesses. The panel of six men and six women will begin deliberations today and possibly write the ending to a case that began in the Halloween season of 1975 and has cycled through several suspects - most notably Skakel's own brother Tommy.

The jurors appeared riveted on the attorneys, and Skakel, 41, appeared riveted on the jurors. He shifted his body to face the jury box squarely, and locked his gaze on the jurors no matter how vivid or searing the argument became. At times his look was beseeching; other times it was bland and fixed. Once when the details of the boxing ring at the Elan School were being reiterated he briefly covered his face with his hand, inhaled, then faced the jury again.

At some point soon he will stand and face them again, to hear their verdict. That is, unless the jury is hopelessly deadlocked. Then, he is likely to stand trial again.

Sherman brought eloquence but no surprises to his closing argument. He said the state's witnesses raised more questions than they answered. He emphasized the earlier police suspicions that rested alternately on Thomas Skakel and former Skakel family tutor Kenneth Littleton, and included an arrest warrant application for Thomas in 1976. He used statements drawn out of the haunted, manic-depressive Littleton to tell the jury, "We learned a confession isn't always a confession."

"Were the Ken Littleton confessions any less compelling, any less persuasive, than the garbage you heard" from the prosecution witnesses, Sherman asked, naming former Elan School classmates John Higgins and Gregory Coleman, who both testified that Skakel made admissions while at the controversial school in the late 1970s.

Benedict, on the other hand, packed some punches into his final argument that drew audible intakes of breath and soft gasps in the courtroom. He used Skakel's own words to dramatic effect - projecting both Skakel's voice from a recording and a transcript of the words onto a screen, some of them highlighted for emphasis - to drive home several statements that Benedict said undermine Skakel's own alibi.

Several of Skakel's siblings and cousins testified he had gone to cousin Jimmy (Terrien) Dowdle's home the night of Moxley's death to watch a television show. But an "independent" witness - Andrea Shakespeare Renna - testified she was certain Skakel remained behind at the family's home in Belle Haven after the others left. Sherman had done a credible job casting doubt on Renna's credibility, highlighting for jurors that Renna had told investigators she wasn't sure how she reached that conclusion, and it may have been rooted in tales she had heard over the years. Renna was close friends with Michael's sister, Julie Skakel, and was at the house that night.

But Benedict on Monday bolstered Renna's credibility with Skakel's own words from the 1997 interview with Hoffman. In it, Skakel details his every move that night, some 22 years later. Skakel talks of returning from Jimmy Terrien's, finding no one around the house, and seeing the door to his sister Julie's bedroom closed. "Um, and I remember that Andrea had gone home. .." Benedict's point: If Skakel left for the Terrien home with two of his brothers and his cousin, Jimmy, while Renna and Julie were still at the house, how did Skakel know Renna had gone home?

Skakel initially told the police he returned from Jimmy Terrien's home sometime between 10:30 and 11 p.m. the night of Oct. 30, 1975, and went to bed. But in conversations with acquaintances years later, and in the book interview, Skakel weaves what Benedict termed a "bizarre tale" about going back out that night, climbing a tree on the Moxley property and masturbating. This, Benedict surmised, was to explain away any semen evidence found at the crime scene. Martha Moxley's body was found beneath a large tree, her pants pulled to beneath her knees and blood smears on the insides of her thighs indicating her assailant may have pushed her legs apart.

"How about the bloody smears on Martha's thighs?" Benedict asked. "What better evidence could you ask for when you are trying to reason out just what he meant when [Skakel] started talking about his masturbation stories. ... [There's] only one conceivable reason - to help explain himself should his DNA ever be discovered."

While Benedict chided the collective inability of Michael's siblings and cousins to recall details about that night, Sherman in turn scoffed at the notion that there was a conspiracy within the family to protect Michael Skakel.

"I have to tell you, this is the worst-run conspiracy I have ever seen," Sherman said. "Most importantly, they forgot to find somebody to hide the golf clubs." Moxley was bludgeoned to death with a 6-iron golf club belonging to a set owned by Skakel's late mother, Ruth. Other clubs belonging to the same set as the murder weapon were found by police in a barrel in the Skakel's mud room.

Sherman opened his argument on a dramatic note: "He didn't do it. He didn't do it. He doesn't know who did it. He wasn't there when the crime was committed and he never confessed." But Judge John F. Kavanewsky Jr. effectively ran an eraser across those remarks, telling the jury later to ignore them because they amounted to testimony by Sherman, representing what his client would have said if he'd testified. Skakel did not testify.

Skakel is the nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, widow of slain presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. He grew up vacationing with a bevy of Kennedy cousins, and later blew the whistle on the illicit affair between Michael Kennedy and his children's teenaged baby sitter in 1996. But his trial never fulfilled the celebrity billing it brought. Ethel Kennedy never showed up. Bobby Kennedy Jr. showed up Monday, briefly, providing a brief raison d'etre for the bench full of would-be spectators in the courthouse corridor who weren't in line by 7:30 a.m. to get a coveted seat in the courtroom.

The lawyers in their final arguments played on the jurors' hearts and minds.

"One thing is apparent, and that is that the defendant does have a better recollection of that night than anybody who testified before you, but then, he has great reason to recall," Benedict said, after a picture of a smiling Martha Moxley in life had dissolved and was supplanted by a crime scene photo of Martha Moxley's body projected onto the screen.

Sherman challenged the jurors not to fall into the state's mode of settling on the suspect of choice at this particular time.

"The state's attorney's office obviously takes some confidence in showing that when [investigators] came to them with the arrest warrant application for Tommy Skakel, they said - no, that's not enough," Sherman said. "Now it's your turn to say, `It's not enough.' There are too many questions. They put a new sticker on that Tommy Skakel arrest warrant and they put Michael's name on it. ... Two weeks, 27 years from now, you shouldn't have that same feeling of nausea that maybe you made the wrong decision in finding Michael Skakel guilty of this crime."

After final arguments, Kavanewsky instructed the jurors on the law, and told them they would be the final arbiters of the credibility of the witnesses and evidence presented to them since May 7. To convict Skakel, Kavanewsky told them, they must find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which the judge defined as "a real doubt, an honest doubt, a doubt that has its foundation in the evidence or lack of evidence."